The Origins of Happiness

Abstract

This chapter summarizes the main findings on what determines happiness. These are expressed in numerical form, because there is no way to compare the importance of different things except by using numbers. The chapter's measure of happiness throughout is life-satisfaction, measured on a scale of 0 to 10. That is, like all other estimates in this book, an average effect across many people, some of whom will suffer more and others less. But from a policy point of view the average is a good place to start. The chapter describes how these findings have been reached. It also illustrates the massive range of issues covered, with a few key findings about what determines happiness.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 237 citations exist upstream.